TER WITH WOLVES

"Well, this is certainly a strange Christmas day!"

It was Dave who spoke. He stood in the doorway of a small log hut,
gazing anxiously out at the landscape before him.

He was in the very heart of Norway, and on every side loomed the
mountains with their covering of ice and snow. Just behind the hut was a
patch of firs, the only trees growing in that vicinity. In front was
what in summer was a mountain torrent, now a mass of irregular ice, the
hollows filled with snow.

The party had arrived at this place the night before, after four days of
almost constant traveling. But here a blinding snowstorm had brought
them to a halt, the driver of the sleigh refusing to trust himself and
his turnout on the mountain trail beyond.

"It is a bad road," said he to Granbury Lapham, in Norwegian. "A slip
and a slide and we should all be killed. We must wait until the storm
is over." And so they put up at this hut by the roadside, and the horses
were stabled in a cow-shed in the rear.

The four days of traveling in the heart of Norway had been full of
interest to Dave and Roger. They had passed through half a dozen towns
and as many more villages, and had met not a few people on the road,
some dressed like ordinary Europeans and others in the bright-colored
clothing of their forefathers. They had had "all kinds of meals, mostly
bad," as Dave declared, and both boys longed for some "United States
cooking," as Roger said. But one thing pleased them--wherever they slept
the beds were good and the rooms as clean as wax.

Up to the day previous they had heard a number of times about the
scientific expedition, which was said to be just ahead. But then
somebody had sent them astray, and in trying to get on the right road
they had been caught in the snowstorm and been forced to take to the
shelter as described.

"Too bad, Dave; especially when you hoped to meet your father by
Christmas," said Roger. "But shut the door--it is too cold for comfort
out there."

"I opened it to get a whiff of fresh air,--it's vile inside, when the
cooking is going on--they use so much fat for frying."

The hut was the property of a sturdy mountaineer, who possessed half a
dozen cows and a large flock of sheep. He was a big fellow, all of six
feet four inches high, with yellowish hair and bright blue eyes. He was
generally good-natured, but the boys once saw him give his oldest son a
box on the ear that sent the youngster rolling ove